


Static Conversations

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Dissociation, Dubious Consent, Eating Disorders, Featuring: an atrocious amount of gum, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Miscommunication, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, and an unsubtle projection of hatred toward galleries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-27
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-11-04 03:40:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10982592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A guide to how not to be a starving artist (includes a short manual for navigating conversations while being a minute away from passing out).---“Admiring a masterpiece?”Kylo flinches from the paper and turns. His lips thin when he sees the glued ginger hair and a tastefully condescending smile. “No,” he says before his mind chases up to his tongue. “I think it’s fucking ugly.”





	Static Conversations

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: explicit description of eating disorders, vomiting, self harm through starvation, dissociation, perception distorted by mental health issues and dubious consent
> 
> please please be careful while reading this. i dont think ive managed to tag/note all of the triggers so please comment if u noticed that i missed something out
> 
> i kno im walking on very thin ice with the topics i decided to pinch at so be kind if i fekt up somehow unintentionally

There is a plastic cup inside the first draw of Kylo’s desk that is overflowing with a deposit of gum that he has been periodically sticking down. Forgetting about it, he reaches down to add a new tack and his nails dig into the solidifying beige mass. He gags, breaking mid-sentence during the call.

Another reluctant customer cuts the line and Kylo pulls off his headset. He cocoons the loaded plastic cup inside a wad of tissues and scoots his office chair toward the waste basket to avoid his cubicle neighbour’s stare. Oh. He’s already gone.

Holding the cargo of the cup, Kylo stands and looks over the cubicle wall. There are still a few people inside the office, grabbing their jackets and heading for the door. It’s lunch.

Thumbing the ribs on the plastic cup, Kylo sits back down and throws the gum load into the waste basket. Smiling fliers wave at him from the cubicle wall under the breeze of the aircon. He turns to his computer monitor as it winks with spreadsheets.

Taking a new strip of gum from the arranged silver lines on the desk, Kylo begins to chew. He tries to draw it out before the tack becomes like rubber, but the motions of his jaw become automatic when he feels the pressure under his ribs.

It’s like bruise that is nestling under Kylo's sternum, cinching moment by moment. Then, something groans inside his stomach and he jams his forearms into it, cursing as he pitches forward.

Kylo stays like that, bent in half in the chair, squeezing his arms whenever his stomach makes a sound while cold sweat collects on his palms. His teeth clamp, making it difficult for him to swallow or breathe.

“Would you like one?”

Kylo turns, almost tipping off his chair.

There is a man watching him from over the side of the cubicle wall that separates Kylo from the neighbouring row. He is young, but his red hair is glued stiff like he is preparing for a 50s commercial shoot. He is holding something out in a hand cuffed by a stiff white sleeve.

“What?” Kylo squints up at the man. The cold white office lights are doubling.

“Do you want an apple?” The man tilts his hand and shows a red and yellow apple with a bruise on its side.

Kylo stares. He is imagining the wrinkled, waxy skin breaking against his teeth. It should still be good on the inside, just dented with the mushed bruise.

Kylo shakes his head. “No, thank you.”

The man frowns and retracts his hand. “You know,” he tells Kylo, folding his arms, “if you are having money troubles, it is perfectly fine to ask fo—”

“I said: no, _thank you_!” Kylo kicks the cubicle wall and the neighbour curls his lip, disappearing behind the grey screen.

 

 

 

There is an explosion building in Kylo’s head as he steps off the subway platform and onto the train.

Inside, there is a struggle for space. Kylo fits himself into a gap between stale bodies and grips onto an age scuffed pole where he can still trace prints of scrubbed graffiti tags.

There is bile sitting at the base of Kylo’s throat as nausea rocks inside his stomach with the swing of the train while the pain nestled in his skull tips from side to side.

Kylo looks over the heads of the passengers at the blacked-out windows. The scratches gleam under the lights like webs. He can see his reflection through their tracks. The hollows on his face can almost be mistaken for bruises.

Counsellors used to assume that glazing the school corridors with posters reading “you are beautiful” will help with anything. Like it’s a weight issue. They also liked to describe in assemblies in the most graphic details the effect malnutrition had on people—No. Girls. It was specifically always on girls.

They liked to think that this would fix the issues.

Kylo frowns in the reflection, watching the skin stretch and his limp hair move in the breeze that comes through the opened slits of windows. He can see the muscles in his neck jump and twitch. His shoulders are bunched, sharp like there isn’t any meat.

The puppy fat had drained away long ago, taking with it the chubby swells of his cheeks that his mom used to pinch. In high school, it made Kylo look older, like he had outgrown his peers. Really, he was about as clueless as the others.

It’s just that Kylo doesn’t deserve his mom’s touch as much as he doesn’t deserve the food in his stomach.

 

 

The refolded gum wrappers lie in ranks on Kylo’s desk. He is turning a ticket in his hands, smoothing his thumbs over the printed text. It’s for a gallery, a private view.

A friend from art school had offered it after her partner bailed out. Now, she can’t come either.

Kylo will go anyway. He will make it like the school days again; he doesn’t get invited to private views anymore, not after he was forcibly excused from school before he finished his degree (apparently electronic monitoring leg tags or a criminal record aren’t considered a trendy accessory).

Kylo gets off the train several stops early and changes lines. The train is emptier on this side and he can stand without breathing in someone’s exhales.

Two stops later, Kylo is back on a platform and resurfaces into a clean district where white pillars hold domed roofs and people talk faster than they think. Kylo wanders through the wide streets to the gallery that sits in the glow of the evening bloom. With the flask in the pocket of his jacket sloshing, he jogs up the dented steps.

The wood and glass doors of the foyer ease around Kylo. The reception is empty. Through the stretch of the lobby, voices pool with the light from the viewing galleries.

With his ticket notched with a rip by a smiling girl at the door, Kylo wanders through. His work-appropriate shoes squeak on the wood floors as he hunches under the lights of the tall ceilings.

Groups mill in the main gallery, separating and condensing with folded arms and pushed up glasses. They gasp and chitter over the frames and canvases that hang from the dusty blue walls.

Kylo keeps his head low and walks around the benches and flinches past the entrapped enthusiasts. His feet rush him up the steps to the second floor while his mind wanders on its own.

It’s quieter up here and the lights are dimmed, leaving pinpoints of white over the displayed oddities. Quiet individual figures wander from frame to frame, leaving for a different room without a comment.

Kylo glances and turns down a corridor toward the restrooms. There, in a closed cubicle, he leans against the door and unscrews the cap of his flask. He knows it won’t take him long to get numb, so he takes easy swallows, feeling the low burn roll down toward his twisted stomach.

In art school, when Kylo and the other idiots couldn’t bare wandering about galleries and taking diligent notes, they would sneak into the men’s restroom and squash into a single cubicle. There, they would drink off brand wine until their giggles turned warm on each other’s skin.

They would walk through the gallery halls like the strange formless figures of the modernist art around them, feeling grander than life.

Now, Kylo just feels sick. He recaps the flask as someone starts to pull paper towels from the dispenser beside the sinks.

There is a slight blurriness to the outlines of the floorboards when Kylo walks out into the centre of the gallery room. It takes a moment for the impact of his footsteps to register as everything around him happens millions of light years away. The warm weight in Kylo’s gut forces a smile out of him.

He follows the canvases across the walls, not registering that he leans too close or blinks too infrequently. The lines blur and colours shift in the corners of Kylo’s eyes, dancing and winking when he isn’t paying attention.

Nothing really pauses to register in the recesses of Kylo’s mind. He just walks, letting everything pass through him. But then his footsteps skid when he notices a small paper sketch, framed and annotated by a plaque. Kylo squints and leans in.

There are grotesque little figures on a white background, shaded with a gradient of red. Their hands are interlocked and thick, bulging necks are thrown back like they are broken.

Kylo stares. They aren’t broken. They shouldn’t be broken. Even though they seem skinned, they are flinging themselves through a dance. Do they have skin. There should be blood. Why are they dancing—

“Admiring a masterpiece?”

Kylo flinches from the paper and turns. His lips thin when he sees the glued ginger hair and a tastefully condescending smile. “No,” he says before his mind chases up to his tongue. “I think it’s fucking ugly.”

It’s a moment longer before pale lips quirk into an asymmetrical smile. “Huh, a harsh critic then.”

“Are you?” Kylo asks.

“No.” Kylo’s office neighbour steps up toward the small frame. His leather shoes stand in parade. “Just a dutiful admirer.”

“So you don’t think it’s ugly.”

“Oh, no. I do think so,” the man corrects. “Much like the rest of the pieces.”

Kylo gives a laugh that is too sharp in the quiet room and glances from the corner of his eye. The lamps from above the frames has turned the man into a black and white photo, he would be colourless if the light didn’t catch in his red hair.

“But you’re wasting your time here,” Kylo points out.

“Well, it’s a big city, but there isn’t much to do except try and culture yourself about things you will never understand.” The ginger man inspects the sketch, like he is dissecting the red dancing figures. “Though I have to admit, there are much preferable places I would rather be.”

“At home on the couch?”

The man gives a smile of white teeth. “If that is where I can find you.”

Kylo’s face drops. He knows what this is about. “I’m not sucking you off in a toilet cubicle.”

The man laughs. “Of course not. That’s why people typically have homes.”

 

Hux. That’s the name he gave. Kylo got a taste of his smoke stung skin on the curb, when Hux pressed a thumb to Kylo’s bottom lip – like a buyer testing a horse.

Kylo felt probed and peeled under Hux’s hand as they sat in the taxi. It made him feel sick, when fingers squeezed higher up his thigh in the dark, digging into the soft fat, like his body was being measured and portioned.

When the taxi stops at the lobby of a hotel, Kylo isn’t sure if he should follow Hux out. But the driver is staring ahead impatiently, making Kylo feel too uncomfortable to excuse himself out of the situation.

“This is where you live?” Kylo asks, standing on the curb as the taxi leaves.

“I have to somewhere, don’t I?” Hux says as he pulls Kylo by the elbow – impatient to get him through the door of glass and embellished gold.

“But you work at a _call centre_.”

“Oh, that,” Hux laughs. He has finally forced Kylo to move. “We can say it’s a punishment: working in a call centre that belongs to a rather large company which is co-owned by the rather unfortunate excuse of my father. But I’ll be out soon, back in my corner office.”

“Huh,” is all Kylo manages before he is yanked through the doors of a hotel filled with finely dressed, well fed people with trust funds tucked away into their breast pockets.

The flavour of bitter smoke bites Kylo’s tongue when Hux kisses him the moment they find privacy in the elevator. His hands are under Kylo’s jacket, groping his sides, and they stay there until they fall through the door of Hux’s suite.

While his clothes are pulled apart by Hux, Kylo tries to distance himself from the feeling by grappling for details in the rooms. Just the kitchen area is bigger than his own apartment. The place looks neat, clean, but lived; there are clothes and wires thrown over the furniture, cutlery on the table.

Hux doesn’t let Kylo stare long. He bites his jaw and grips Kylo’s wrists in his cold hands. The bed catches Kylo like a cloud.

 

First, Hux fucked him from behind. Kylo had struggled when Hux tried to get him on his back; like this, on his stomach, Hux won’t be able to see his flaccid cock or the lost look glazing his face.

Kylo’s knees didn’t give out because of how deeply Hux fucked him with one foot up on the mattress. The tremors just got that bad and his vision started to go funny.

They had gone too roughly. But the ache is distant while Kylo lies slumped forward, drooling onto the mattress as Hux groans behind him.

After Hux cums, Kylo slips on the covers and stays down. When he feels Hux’s trailing hand, Kylo whimpers and tries to push himself back up on his knees and asks Hux to finger him.

The sounds are sloppy and the feeling is dull as Hux lies beside him, lazily massaging his fingertips into Kylo’s prostate with the left-over lube.

Kylo isn’t sure if he comes or not. By the end of it, there is just sweat and a pulsing ache. It all blurs together into one sick feeling before Kylo blacks out.

 

Come morning, Kylo wakes up to wet kisses on his neck. His skull feels like it’s shrinking. Black dots spike in his eyes as a warm hand rests on his back.

Hux keeps kissing him, trying to get at his lips. But Kylo is scared he will vomit in Hux’s mouth.

Kylo falls out of the bed and runs while the nausea hasn’t gotten to him. He crashes into the bathroom, tripping on the mat in front of the shower, and collapses over the open toilet bowl.

Kylo retches, but nothing comes out except drool. He tries again, shoving two fingers past the pooling spit and jamming them into the back of his throat. Kylo gags and nothing comes up. There is just pain, pulsing inside his stomach.

It has to be the _food_. The stale crackers Kylo made himself eat yesterday. It _has_ to be. It must hurt because he didn’t need it. Why _would_ he need it? He doesn’t do _anything._ He is just lazy. He is dysfunctional. He doesn’t _need_ it. He _doesn’t need_ it. He _doesn’t_ —

“Caught a flu?”

Kylo’s head falls against the toilet seat. His breathing echoes in the bowl.

“Look at those bones on you. I didn’t even notice.”

A finger bumps over his shoulders.

“Maybe I could order you in some breakfast.”

Hux is crouched on the floor beside Kylo. There is a hand on the base of his neck. It’s meant to be comforting.

“You look like you could use it.”

“No,” Kylo breathes. He pushes himself up using the bowl. His head spins with pain, white pulses in front of his eyes. “I’ll go home.”

“Or you could say.” Hux is trying to keep him down. “Come back to bed. You don’t look good.”

“I’ll go home.”

 

Kylo sits in the bus with his head on his knees, pillowed by his jacket. The subway would be faster, but he doesn’t think he would be able to make it back up the steps.

Hux had tried to follow him out of the hotel suite and convince him to take a taxi. But Kylo shut the elevator doors before Hux could follow through.

The bus shakes over a pothole and Kylo whimpers under the shelter of his arms.

 

Morning clings over the city. Kylo forgot that it’s Friday. After he forced himself to get out of his bed, still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, he called into work.

“Fine, fine. Just don’t get anyone else sick.”

Kylo barely had to make an excuse.

It took him another hour before he managed to fill a glass with water and sit on the bathroom floor, taking sips that soaked his sour mouth. It gave him a little strength to undress and dump the clothes in the hamper.

After migrating several times through the apartment, Kylo decided on a spot under the window of his bedroom. He sits on the floor, inspecting his fingers that are sticky from instant coffee. A cherry from a tinned fruit cocktail is rolling over his tongue.

Kylo already ate two pieces of pineapple, he is trying to decide if he needs more. The tinned food was the only thing that hadn’t gone rancid in his fridge. He feels guilt about letting it go bad.

Kylo sometimes tries to do better. He goes to a supermarket to buy groceries, trying to start easy – with the basics. But panic starts to yank at his mind. Why is he like this in the first place? Because he is inept, whinging, stupid. He abandoned opportunities and disappointed.

After years of moving schools and counsellors, Kylo promised to his parents that he would try to be better in college. They promised to pay his tuition fees in art school, as long as he made something of it.

Things aren’t made to go right. He screwed up and shouted threats when his mom asked why. That got dad angry and he blamed Kylo for the lost money. They had moved states for Kylo. They had abandoned prospects for him. They abandoned a life.

Kylo left home with scrapes on his knuckles covered in splinters and another warning from the police.

Trying to do better doesn’t make sense because it was his fault. He shouldn’t be like this. He doesn’t have the right to be like this: moping and blaming. He is a man. He shouldn’t be _this_.

So why does Kylo deserve sleep or the taste of food on his tongue as he gets fat and soft?

Kylo pulls up the waste basket toward himself and spits the unchewed, syrup soaked cherry inside.

 

 

The clock is cutting close to nine on the Monday when Kylo crashes into his seat, sucking on his coffee burnt tongue as he taps awake his computer monitor.

People are moving around the office floor, but Kylo refuses to acknowledge any concerns beyond the parameter of the monitor. His eyes are arching, the numbers double and words hitch as he speaks through the headset.

 

The hour hand is tapping midday. Kylo’s hands are skipping across the keyboard under no control from him. His tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth and his eyes are too wide.

There is thump on the corner of Kylo’s desk. He turns, almost spinning the office chair into the wall of the cubicle.

Hux is stood there, holding onto a mug of black coffee. He rests it on the desk.

“You okay?” Hux asks and glances over Kylo, his polished face yielding up some concern.

“Yeah.” Kylo tucks his arms around himself. “Fine.”

“Has the flu passed?” Hux tries a smile. “I got worried about you, when you left. And then you didn’t turn up on Friday.”

Kylo nods.

“I brought you coffee.” Hux points.

Kylo doesn’t touch the mug. “Yeah,” he says, “Thanks.”

“If you need anything, I’ll just be—” Hux gestures toward the cubicle wall, flusters, hides his hands behind his back. “Just, over—”

“Yeah,” Kylo interrupts, almost sorry to stop the embarrassment because of how slick and practised Hux’s charade usually is. It’s a good act, he has to admit.

Hux leaves and Kylo only remembers the coffee when it’s cold. He tries to drink some and gags. By the day’s end, the mug is still full and a headache is building inside Kylo’s skull.

There is a tap on the cubicle wall. An unfortunately familiar face looks down at Kylo as he takes off his headset.

“Please don’t tell me you are going to stay here,” Hux says with a pout. His arms in carefully ironed sleeves are folded on the wall. He looks around Kylo’s desk. There is another parade of gum. “It’s a sorry sight,” he mutters.

“I have work.” Kylo turns away and continues to type.

“Work?” laughs Hux. “You barely manage to get anything done. You just sit all day pressing on the backspace because you aren’t paying attention where your hands are going.”

Kylo stops typing and grimaces. “I just need to finish this—”

“Or what? Nobody is paying attention. Nobody cares.” Hux laughs again. It’s nasal, sharp. “This shit hole call centre is the last of anybody’s concerns. You’re literally wasting your time doing the worst job known t—”

Hux’s voice breaks when he is choked by his own tie.

“Shut the fuck up,” Kylo spits as the fabric of Hux’s tie wrapped around his hand squeaks. “You don’t know shit, you fucking asswipe!”

Hux’s feet are kicking on the other side of the cubicle. He is pinned forward against his desk and his tie is cinching as his face goes pink. “Kylo—Kylo—! I—I—!” He tries to twist free in panic, but it just gets the knot of his noose closer to his throat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—!”

There is nobody close enough to see what is going on; most people have gone home. But there is still a threat of Kylo jeopardising his position. That’s what he tells himself when he lets Hux go. It’s just that he is the company owner’s son.

Hux falls against his chair, almost missing it. His face is dotted red and his eyes are shining like glass. He looks at Kylo and leaves.

 

 

It’s Wednesday afternoon. Kylo’s hand is glued to his cheek over the print of his headset. He is scrolling through a spreadsheet, not seeing a single number as he wonders if he will still have time to do laundry when he gets home.

Something knocks against Kylo’s desk and blocks of the fluorescent lights. Kylo scrolls harder.

When the shadow doesn’t move, he decides to ask, “Yes Hux?”

“I know this is out of the blue, but I was wondering if you would like to get dinner with me?”

Kylo looks at the edge of his desk where Hux is sat with his back nudging unsorted files. He is ready to leave the office, like most people have about an hour ago.

“Why are you bothering me?” Kylo asks.

Hux shrugs. “Take it as an apology.” Then he looks at Kylo sourly and adds, “I really don’t know. Maybe I just feel guilty.”

Guilt, huh. Guess that’s the same frenzy that has Kylo.

“Do you want to get out of here?” he asks Hux.

 

Kylo’s sheets haven’t been changed in weeks. They are soft, from sweat and dirt of his skin. Neither he or Hux notice this as they struggle for the mattress.

Kylo takes his own fingers while he sucks Hux’s cock. He enjoys how deep he can take it, the way the head pushes against the back of his throat without hurting.

Neither of them have a condom. But it doesn’t matter; it wouldn’t have changed Kylo’s mind even if Hux didn’t tell him that he is clean.

He rides Hux deliriously. They are both still dressed in their shirts, Hux has his slacks on that pulled aside only just. He keeps trying to touch Kylo, even as his hands are pushed away.

Hux takes Kylo’s hips and digs his fingers into the sallow skin as he thrust up, pushing his feet against the mattress. Kylo grips Hux’s shoulders and grinds his teeth from the sharp ache inside that probably should be pleasure.

When Kylo cums, he collapses with black stains in his eyesight. Hux pulls out of him and drops him chest first on the bed. Then, he climbs back onto Kylo and continues to fuck him with a hand on the back of his neck.

Kylo doesn’t complain.

Maybe they go another round. Kylo doesn’t remember. All he feels is Hux’s body over him, warm, a hand holding over his ribs. Thick saliva rolls in Kylo’s mouth, sour. His legs, arms ache. Hux sighs into his neck.

 

The sound of Hux pulling on his clothes wakes Kylo. He doesn’t move or open his eyes; if he keeps quiet, Hux will leave without making it awkward while it’s still early.

When Hux walks out of the bedroom, Kylo pulls up the covers over his shoulders and sleeps. His bare legs stick out from the cocoon.

Maybe twenty minutes pass before the slap of the fridge jolts Kylo. He kicks his feet, flinging aside the covers as he scrambles out of the bed and goes to stand off the mattress when his foot catches on the sheets.

Kylo falls face first into the floorboards. Heaving himself up, he rummages for his boxers and runs out of the bedroom as he pulls them on.

There isn’t much space in the apartment and the humid warmth of a recently used shower wafts into the kitchen. The freezer door is open, vaguely obscuring Hux who is crouched on the floor, dressed loosely in his work clothes.

Hux closes the last empty freezer draw and looks up at Kylo who stands in the doorway, mostly naked and staring.

“Don’t you have anything to eat here?” Hux asks. His skin is still dewy from the shower.

“I—I—I—” Kylo stops and covers his face. “I,” he tries again, speaking between his palms, “usually buy out when I’m hungry.”

There is silence. Kylo looks between his fingers. Hux is not looking at him. There is a frown smudged across his lips as he closes the freezer door.

“And how often do you get hungry?” Hux asks, turning to glance up.

Kylo crosses his arms and feels his breathing heave against his ribs. He has heard this before. He has heard it too many times and it leaves a heavy weight in his gut.

“Don’t try to act like you know me just— Just because you stuck your dick up my ass,” Kylo says, raising his voice like it’s not shaking.

Hux shrugs and stands from the floor. “All I’m trying to say is that if you ate once in a while maybe you wouldn’t get those cramps,” he says as he dusts of his knees.

Kylo nods, squeezing his middle.

“I noticed they tend to bother you quite frequently.”

Kylo keeps nodding. He learned that it’s something that helps when he can’t keep his mind at ground level but people expect him to participate in a coherent conversation. Just keep fucking nodding.

“And maybe you will stop being like a corpse that I have to drag after myself.”

Hux laughs and Kylo closes his eyes, imagining that he is putting a fist through Hux’s mouth and the laughter being choked by splintered teeth. Kylo keeps his arms tight against his sternum.

“If I ask you to leave—” Kylo starts, causing Hux to pause. “If I ask you to leave, right now, will you?” he asks.

A moment of silence pulls like a tack of drying gum. Kylo opens his eyes and sees the pinch between Hux’s brows as he looks toward the kitchen window, biting his lips like he is eating his own words.

“Fine,” Hux says and shoves past Kylo, taking a shoulder to his bare chest.

Kylo flinches with the crash of the front door, like a delayed reaction to the hit. The sound of the disappearing footsteps leeches into the apartment. He covers his eyes with his fists and tries to breathe steady, but his count of inhales deteriorates and Kylo heaves for air.

 

Work passed like a scene viewed from the wrong end of the telescope.

After Hux had left the apartment, Kylo forced himself into the shower and laughed when he found himself staring at the green residue between the tiles. He drank yesterday’s coffee and made it into the office five minutes late.

Kylo hadn’t looked up from his keyboard until he noticed the blur of his boss passing through the office. Kylo sat rigid, waiting for a hand on his shoulder and a hushed voice telling him that they need to have a talk.

But the man with the sweat stained shirt and dated jewellery stopped at the cubicle parallel to Kylo’s, the one designated for Hux’s punishment.

Kylo hadn’t been able to catch the conversation over the voice coming through his headset. It was over before the call ended.

The memory of it skips Kylo’s mind until he is sat in a mostly empty train on his way home with a bag of McDonalds fries and a banana milkshake. He has his nose against his phone screen, working his jaw until he doesn’t recognise the mush inside his mouth.

When Kylo’s hand hits the bottom of the bag, he slurps the last of the milkshake and compresses the cup inside the bag. Twisting the paper, he shoves it down the empty seats until it looks like he is not responsible for it.

The train begins to slow and Kylo gets up, rubbing the oil and salt off his fingers. The heavy sensation in his stomach beginning to settle as he turns to the doors where flyers glare at him from the scratched glass, waving in the breeze that passes from the open slit of a window.

He stares back, following the shapes of the words.

The doors open and Kylo steps out onto the platform.

 

 

It’s already late and there isn’t a sound on the office floor except from the faulty water dispenser. Kylo almost thinks that he missed Hux leaving, but he hears the creak of the office chair on the other side of his cubicle wall.

It’s Wednesday again. It took him this long to not freak out at the last moment when everyone has finally vacated the floor and leave.

Seated, Kylo stares at his reflection in the in the blank monitor of his computer. He waits, and hopes, that Hux will get up and leave without giving Kylo the chance.

But moment after moment pass and nothing changes. He is running out of excuses.

Kylo stands and wipes his hands on the sides of his jeans. The time it takes him to walk around the row of cubicles he uses to arrange the words on his tongue.

Kylo stops when he hears the office chair squeak and looks. The slouch of Hux’s back is turned to Kylo, the light of his computer is catching on his collar and the ends of his combed hair. Solitair is glitching on his screen. Kylo bites a smile.

Keeping quiet, he leans against the diving cubicle wall, trying to pull together his rehearsed casual face. But the wall creaks and Kylo doesn’t get the chance to get his words aligned before Hux turns.

“Can I help you?” Hux asks, leaning an elbow against the desk.

Kylo is tired. All he needs is to crawl home and under his quilt. But guilt holds him choked in place and he knows his words won’t come out smoothly, but he tries.

“I—” Kylo’s voice breaks and he winces. “I—I—”

“If you are planning on doing this until Friday,” Hux interrupts, “I suggest you book an appointment; I will be gone on Monday.”

Kylo grinds his teeth until his jaw feels askew. He forces his mouth open. “I want to talk to you—”

Hux laughs. “Clearly.”

It hurts Kylo not to turn away and leave this. “Will you _let me_ then?”

Hux gives him a shrug and an easy, artful smile. “I don’t know. Is it something worth hearing?”

He doesn’t know. Maybe this is just fishing for more bullshit chances. Kylo takes a gulp of the stale office air and lets the words trip over his teeth. “There is a new exhibition at the gallery,” he says. “I saw it—The flyer for it. And I have two tickets.”

Hux watches Kylo heave for breath. “And?” he asks.

“Would you like to come with me? Maybe we’ll get to see all the rooms this time.”

Hux’s expression melts to pity. “I don’t want to fuck you,” he says.

“I’m not asking you to.”

Hux’s eyes follow Kylo as he tries to strand straighter, maybe not look as frightened as he is. Then, he tells Kylo, “You keep making me feel like I’m doing something wrong. Am I?”

Kylo blanches; he didn’t think that it mattered to Hux. “It’s not—”

“I thought it was my fault when you were sick.” Hux looks down at his hand that is scratching lines through the paint on the plywood desk. “I just wanted to have fun with you,” he mutters.

“We did have fun.” Kylo reaches down to put his hand over Hux’s, but it’s snatched from under his palm.

“Well, I think I’ve had enough.” The computer monitor is switched off and Hux stands. “I think I’ve had enough of your shit.” He shrugs on his jacket and straightens his back. “I’m not your psychiatrist and I am not required to deal with this.”

"I’m not asking you to deal with _this_ ," Kylo insists.

“Then I won’t,” Hux says, lifting his chin to level himself with Kylo.

Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, Kylo lifts up a ticket and places it on the desk with resignation. “In case you want to culture yourself about things you don’t understand.”

Kylo takes the pleasure in walking away first. But the victory feels like sickness that drags after him.

 

 

After spending Friday night staring at his ceiling until the sun touched the plaster, Kylo forced himself to go to a grocery store at nine in the morning to buy Fruit Loops and a litre bottle of flavoured water.

Sitting on a stool in his kitchen, he ate handful after handful of the dry cereal. Kylo didn’t feel the weight of the multicoloured mush once he swallowed, so it was fine.

He doesn’t remember what he did with the rest of the Saturday afternoon except that he nursed the same bottle of water for hours. By the time Kylo’s mind got coherent again, it wasn’t even ten minutes before he had to leave the apartment to make it to the gallery.

He makes it though, red in the face and panting as he shoves himself through the gallery doors.

Inside, the scene is the same, as if the previous patrons had just been swapped out by their replacement counterparts. Kylo approaches them to look over their shoulders at the gilded frames. Colours smear past him as he walks and conversations blur into a soup of syllables.

Kylo passes up the main staircase to the hall where platforms of sculptures dominate the floor. In the back, fractured photographs in black frames and images like kids doodles on scrap paper stretch over the walls.

In the corner of the room, there is a framed plain sheet of baby blue paper. There are two shapes on it. One is a stick, glued to the paper, the other a print mark where an identical stick was previously attached.

Kylo stares. Waiting for the pun.

“Found a masterpiece?”

Kylo forgets to straighten out his grimace when he looks up. He wonders if hallucinations are making a comeback when Hux frowns at him from the lacking response.

“Kylo—?”

“No,” he says. “I’m just curious if being a fucking moron is part of the requirement to submit work.”

“Huh,” Hux considers and turns to the offending sheet of paper.

Kylo knows that he isn’t subtle when he eyes up Hux during his examination of the work, but he looks like he just rolled off his couch at the last minute to pull on the first clothes he found (washed out jeans, a hoodie with worn through elbows). Even Hux’s hair is lacking the usual litre of glue.

“So,” speaks Kylo, continuing to stare as he rocks back on his heels. “Feel cultured?”

Hux leans away from the frame, holding his chin in his hand. “Oh yes,” he says flatly. “Certainly. I feel… Deeply affected by the… Stick?” He frowns and gestures to the frame. “ _Is_ it meant to signify something?”

“I guess? I mean, I could basically give you a reiteration of every modernist lecture I had in art school which could make any framed shit look like art?”

Kylo doesn’t snatch back his stare when Hux turns.

“You have an art degree?”

“No. Never graduated.”

They both turn back to the stick.

It takes Hux to overcome the silence again.

“I want to say that I’m sorry,” he tells Kylo. “It wasn’t fair what I said to you in the office. I know it was very horrible of me, and insensitive.”

Kylo hums and keeps his eyes on the framed stick.

“So. I was wondering, if you will let me, can I take you out to dinner?” Hux stumbles. “To apologise… And, maybe, try again?” He is fidgeting with the inside of his hoodie pocket, pulling lint from the old fabric.

Kylo tries not to smile. “We both could do with trying again. We could start with coffee,” he suggests and sees from the corner of his eye something hopeful come over Hux.

He nods and hair falls into his face. “Yeah, we could do that.”

“And we can bitch about our co-workers, exchange our sob stories—”

“Fuck off,” Hux laughs. His lips pull in a smile that isn’t quite practised or tasteful. Just honest. “I don’t have a sob story.”

“Everyone has one,” Kylo tells him in a conspiring voice, leaning over. “You know, one of those tear jerkers everyone likes to tell and use like an excuse for all the bad shit they do.”

“Fine.” Hux folds his arms and in turn leans toward Kylo and whispers, “But you will have to let me refine it first. I have to get the semantic fields right, to reach that Nicholas Sparks level.”

“Alright. I will bring the Kleenex and ice cream.”

“For now, then.” Hux takes Kylo by the elbow. “Since you have revealed your talent of artistic critique, you might as well give me a commentary about the exhibition.”

Kylo smiles as he is pulled through the hall, toward the door where frames stand under the pinpoint lights. “Yeah? Why have I got a feeling you will get bored.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Hux tells him. “I came to learn about something I don’t understand. You will help me, won’t you?”

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> the Stick On Stick Off is a genuine piece i saw at the whitworth gallery. i still dont know what do with that memory


End file.
